It turns out that to the two clubs involved, the gap between Prestia’s worth and pick 6 is a bet about how the Tigers will perform in 2017.

The trade, as it stands, looks tilted to Gold Coast. By swapping a second pick for roughly the same pick next year, it looks more even in ratio terms because the almost 500 point gap is a smaller share of what’s changing hands. But the gap remains large. We know that Richmond did not think Prestia was worth pick 6 in the first place, so Richmond accepting a swap of essentially evenly valued secondary picks is interesting.

Gold Coast are well set for their two academy selections. They have picks 4, 6, 8, 26, 44 in the draft and would be likely to need to use 6 for Jack Bowes and either 26, 44 or both for Brad Scheer.

The interesting part here is that Richmond are backing themselves to move up the ladder in order to devalue their 2017 pick and bridge the gap caused by knowingly overpaying for Prestia.

We don’t think Richmond can close that gap they perceive between the worth of pick 6 and Prestia, but this has nothing to do with Richmond’s expected performance in 2017. As we’ve noted before, in the 20’s and 30’s all have pretty similar value expectations. There’s very little drop off in expected games in this pick range:

As such, even if Richmond win the premiership and their 2017 pick becomes pick 36, the Suns don’t lose much compared to the 2016 pick 26 they’ve just given up.